Francis Gale Snelling Street was the
first doctor in Bow employed by the Crediton Union in 1836. He was
born in Exeter, the son of Thomas Street, a surgeon. Some of his
family in Exeter caused a little notoriety in the 1820s.

Francis GS Street’s cousin, Richard Street, was born in Exeter
in 1783. Richard had been apprenticed to Benjamin Hill, a carriage
maker in Longbrook St. After Hill died in 1803, Richard had an
affair with Hill’s widow, Drusilla, and took over the business.
[Drusilla Hill nee Elston had been born in Morchard Bishop in
1770.] Drusilla became pregnant and gave birth to Richard’s
illegitimate daughter. Shortly after her birth the couple married
in St David's church; even so the child was baptised there as
Drusilla Hill five days later, on 2 Feb 1807.

On the death in 1812 of her grandfather, Josias Elston of
Morchard Bishop, young Drusilla inherited £400 This was likely held
in trust for her until she was 21 or married. In 1821, when she was
14, her father had her made a Ward of Court, to protect her from
suitors out to marry her for her money.

At the end of June 1822, when Drusilla was 15 years and five
months old, her father obtained an injunction from the Lord
Chancellor forbidding one Horatio Reeves from having any
communication with her. He also alleged that her mother was
encouraging her to enter a relationship.

Horatio Reeves was 21, the son of an Exeter pawnbroker, and was
a druggist in that city.

Within a couple of weeks of the injunction, however, the couple
managed to elope by coach via Bristol to London with the assistance
of Horatio’s elder brother George. As Horatio was in breach of the
injunction, warrants for his arrest were issued.

They were tracked down by a Constable Bishop who discovered them
in a lodging house in Hoxton, in London’s East End. The elopement
was described in a “humorous”
collection of short stories, where the couple were named and
Horatio was described thus: “…notwithstanding
the desperate adventure he had undertaken, he seems of a cool
phlegmatic temperament, and how "the infant" could have fallen so
deeply in love with him, we cannot imagine; for though he has a
pleasing obliquity of vision in his eyes, his nose is embossed with
very angry-looking pustules, and his person is remarkably spare and
uncooth.”

They were taken to the courts. Miss Hill was returned to Exeter
and the brothers Reeves were remanded. At the end of July they were
both committed to Fleet prison for contempt, and the mother was
banned from communicating with her daughter.

August 1822:
At the Guildhall, Exeter, on Friday, a serious charge was made
before the Right Worshipful the Mayor, against Mrs. Street, the
mother of Miss Drusilla Street, of an attempt to poison her
husband, previous to the elopement of which the public have lately
heard so much. — John Bennett, shoemaker, in St. Sidwell’s,
deposed, that he called on the defendant to borrow 7s. She said she
could put him in the way to get 20 pounds; he asked how, and she
replied, "By poisoning my rogue of a husband." She showed him some
white stuff, mixed up in a tea-cup, which she said was arsenic she
got to poison rats with, but she did not think it was strong
enough, and gave him money to go to Mr. Reeve's to buy some more.
He went and asked for some arsenic to poison rats: Mr. R. told him
nux vomica [strychnine] was better, and gave him some. While this
deposition was making, the defendant cried bitterly, and exclaimed
— “Lord have mercy upon me!" — A conversation then took place
between the Counsel and Attorneys, on the amount of bail necessary.
Mr. Street said he feared he should be obliged to leave Exeter, to
be safe from his wife. Mrs. Street (in great agony), “I won't
injure him — l won't injure him a pin's point." It was ultimately
agreed to take the bail of two persons in £200 each, for her
appearance at the Sessions to answer the charge.

Richard Street then wrote a letter to a local paper, explaining
that in due course the full story would come out. He ended it:

“I cannot
lose this opportunity of rendering to the Public my warmest
gratitude for the interest they have taken in the welfare of my
dear child, who has been placed by her guardian in a most
respectable situation, (and for whose maintenance and education I
have bound myself to pay two hundred pounds per annum) and where
she has already had her mind opened to see and value her
deliverance from the snares which were spread for her
distraction.”

In October that year, at the assizes, no bill of indictment was
preferred against Mrs. Drusilla Street, on a charge for attempting
to bribe John Bennett to administer poison to her husband Richard
Street.

In November Horatio was released from Fleet Prison.

In February 1823 in the Consistorial Court in Exeter Drusilla
Street obtained a divorce from Richard on grounds of his adultery.
He was ordered to pay her £160 per annum plus some property rental
income. Richard Street unsuccessfully appealed to the Court of
Arches, on the grounds that his income was only about £500, and
that he had to pay £200 per year for his daughter’s education and
maintenance. He sold part of his business.

In August that year Drusilla unsuccessfully applied to the court
to prevent Richard from leaving the country as it was said he was
planning to go to Ostend to get out of paying maintenance.

Richard Street wrote his will in May 1824 – specifying that
Drusilla would get nothing if she was to ever marry Horatio Reeves,
in which case her inheritance would go to Richard’s brother
William. Richard died the following October.

As soon as she was 21, Drusilla Elston Hill and Horatio Reeves,
at that time a druggist and grocer in South Street, Exeter, were
married on 2 May 1828 at the Exeter church of Saint Mary Major.

In 1832 Drusilla’s mother died and as requested in her will was
buried back at Morchard Bishop.

Horatio and Drusilla lived in Exmouth.

In 1841 they had a servant, 21 year old Charlotte Lovell. She
gave birth to a daughter Mary Ann in Glastonbury in 1844. Mary Ann
later emigrated to Australia where she documented her parents as
Horatio Lovell, a chemist, and Charlotte Reeves. It looks highly
probable that Horatio Reeves was the father.

Horatio was a part owner of the schooner “Exmouth” and around
1846 he was a coal merchant there. In 1857 he was appointed
“inspector of nuisances” for Exmouth board of Health.

In 1868 on Dec. 4, at the Parade, Exmouth, Drusilla, the beloved
wife of Horatio Reeves, after enduring a long and painful illness
with Christian fortitude, died aged 62 years. They had lived
together for 40 years. Horatio later moved to live with his
brother, a horse riding instructor in Torquay, where he died in
1885 aged 84.

.

One of Horatio’s brothers, John Reeves, was a surgeon oculist.
In 1828 he set up the Devon and Exeter Eye Institution at his house
in Gandy Street. This seems to have lasted less than a year, as it
was in competition with the West of England Eye Infirmary, which
had already been established for 20 years. He died in 1840 in
Campbell Town, New Brunswick, of “a blood vessel which bursted in
his lung”, leaving a widow and three young children.